Schmidt Number: S-2257

On-line since: 30th September, 2005

Before we enlarge upon
what will emerge from any further elaboration of the significant
image of the Twilight of the Gods, it will be well to establish a
firm foundation from which to proceed. For we shall deal with the
nature of the Germanic and Scandinavian Folk Soul, and from the
results of our investigation describe it in greater detail. We shall
discover how the whole spiritual life of Europe works in concert, how
the activity of the various Folk Spirits has furthered the
development of mankind in the remote past, in the present and will
continue to do so in the future. Every single people, even isolated
fragments of peoples, have their special contribution to make to this
great collective task. You will realize from what has been said that,
in certain respects, the task, the mission of educating the ‘I’
through the evolutionary stages of the human being, of shaping it and
of gradually developing it, devolved upon the Christian and post
Christian cultures of Europe in particular. In primitive times, as we
have shown in the case of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples, the
‘I’ was revealed clairvoyantly to man. According to
tradition this ‘I’ was bestowed upon man by an Angelic
Being, Donar or Thor, who stands midway between man and the Folk
Soul. We have seen that the individual still felt himself to be
ego-less, devoid of personality; he looked upon the ‘I’
as a gift from the spiritual world.

In
the East, when the ‘I’ really awoke, it was not of course
experienced in the same way. There man had already reached
subjectively such a high degree of perfection that he did not feel
the ‘I’ as something extraneous, but as his own property.
At the time when man became ego-conscious in the East, Eastern
culture was already so far advanced that it was capable of gradually
developing that finely-spun speculation, logic and wisdom which is
reflected in Eastern wisdom. The East, therefore, no longer
experienced the whole process of receiving the ego as if it were
bestowed by a higher spiritual world through the instrumentality of a
divine-spiritual Being such as Thor. That was the experience of
Europe; hence the European felt this gradual unfolding of the
individual ‘I’ as the emergence out of the Group Soul.
The Germanic-Scandinavian man still felt himself attached to a Group
Soul, to be a member of a closely-knit unit or family, that he
belonged to an integrated community. For this reason, nearly a
hundred years after Christ, Tacitus could describe the Teutons of
Central Europe as apparently belonging to separate tribes and yet as
members of an organism, and belonging to the unity of the organism.
Thus each individual still felt himself at that time to be a member
of the tribal ‘I’. He felt his individual ‘I’
gradually emerging from the tribal ‘I’ and be recognized
in the God Thor the bestower of the ‘I’, the God who
really endowed him with his individual ‘I’. But at the
same time he felt that this God was still united with the collective
spirit of the tribe with that which lives in the Group Soul. To this
Group Soul was given the name “Sif “. This is the name of
the spouse of Thor. Sif is related linguistically to the word Sippe,
kinship, although the relationship is veiled or concealed. Occultly,
however, Sif signifies the Group Soul of the individual community
from which the individual emerges. Sif is the Being who unites
herself with the God of the individual ‘I’, with Thor,
the bestower of the individual ‘I’. The individual
perceives Sif and Thor as the Beings who endowed him with his ‘I’.
It was in this way that Nordic man experienced them at a time when
the peoples in other regions of Europe had already been given other
tasks in preparing man's ego-development.

Each
individual people had its appointed task; chief amongst them was that
homogeneous group of peoples, that widely distributed folk community
whom we know by the name of Celts. It was the responsibility of the
ancient Celtic Folk Spirit, who, as we know from earlier lectures,
was later given quite different tasks, to educate the still youthful
‘I’ of the peoples of Europe. To this end it was
necessary that the Celts themselves should receive an education and
instruction which was mediated directly from the higher world. Hence
it was entirely appropriate that through their Initiates, the Druid
priests, the Celts should transmit to other nations instruction
received from higher worlds and which they could not have acquired of
themselves.

The
whole of European culture is a legacy of the European Mysteries. The
progressive Folk Souls are always the leaders of the collective
culture of mankind as it unfolds. But at the time when these European
Folk Spirits enjoined upon men to act more on their own initiative it
was necessary that the Mysteries should gradually withdraw. Hence
with the withdrawal of the Celtic element there followed a gradual
withdrawal of the Mysteries into more secret places. At the time of
the ancient Celts the Mysteries established a much more direct
relationship between the spiritual Beings and the people, because the
‘I’ was still attached to the group-soul-life and yet the
Celtic element was to bring the gift of the ‘I’ to the
other Germanic tribes. Thus in the period preceding the evolution
proper of the Northern and Germanic peoples, the Mystery teachings
could be given to European civilization only by the ancient Celtic
Mysteries. These Mystery teachings allowed just so much to be
revealed as was necessary in order to establish a basis for the whole
culture of Europe. Now the most diverse Folk Souls and Folk Spirits
were able to draw nourishment from this old culture by mingling with
the widely diverse racial fragments, national communities and folk
elements, and they brought the ‘I’ into ever new
situations in order to nurture it, the ‘I’ which was
struggling to free itself from its attachment to the group-soul.

After
the old Greek culture had to a certain extent reached its high point
in the fulfillment of its special mission, we see a totally different
aspect of this same mission in the spirit of ancient Rome and its
various stages of culture. We have already mentioned that the several
post-Atlantean civilizations follow upon one another in strict
sequence. If we wish to have an overall picture of the successive
stages of post-Atlantean civilization we may summarize them as
follows: the old Indian culture worked upon the human etheric body.
Hence the remarkable wisdom and clairvoyant insight of the ancient
Indian culture, because — after the development of special
human capacities — it was a culture reflected in the human
etheric body. We may envisage the ancient Indian Culture somewhat as
follows:

Diagram 6Click image for large view

Between
the Atlantean epoch and the later post-Atlantean epoch the Indian
Folk Spirit developed to the full his inner soul-forces without
developing ego-consciousness. He then returned to his activity in the
etheric body. The essential element in the ancient Indian culture is
that the ancient Indian was able to return again to the etheric body
with his highly developed, highly refined faculties of soul and
within that body he developed those marvelously delicate forces the
later reflection of which we can still see in the Vedas, and in a
still more refined form in the Vedanta philosophy. This was only
possible because the Indian Folk Soul had achieved a high degree of
development before it was conscious of the ‘I’, and this
again at a time when man could perceive by means of the forces of the
etheric body.

The
Persian Folk Soul had not developed so far; its organ of perception
was limited to the sentient body or astral body. The
Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean culture was again different. Here the
organ of perception was the Sentient Soul; and the characteristic of
the Egypto-Chaldean culture was the ability to work in the Sentient
Soul. The Graeco-Latin Folk Spirit was related to the Intellectual or
Mind-Soul in which he was active. He himself was only able to work
upon this Intellectual Soul because the Intellectual Soul, in its
turn, had a kind of psychic counterpart in the etheric body. But the
form of cosmogony that now emerged in Greece was, to some extent,
less real, less clear-cut; it had less the stamp of reality. Whilst
the form of cognition in the ancient Indian culture was directly
related to the activity of the etheric body, the Greek culture
presented a blurred, pale, lifeless image of reality; as I have
already said, it was like the memory of what these people had once
experienced, like a memory reflected in their etheric body.

In
the other peoples who followed the Greeks we are chiefly concerned
with the use of the physical body for the progressive development of
the Spiritual Soul (or Consciousness-Soul). Hence the Greek culture
was a culture that we can only understand from within, if we realize
that in this culture what is important in external experience is that
which springs from the inner life of the Greeks. On the other hand,
the peoples living more towards the West and the North had, under the
guidance of their Folk Souls, to turn increasingly towards the
external world, towards the phenomena of the physical plane, and to
develop whatsoever has a part to play on that plane. This was the
special task of the Northern and Germanic peoples which they alone
could fulfil, because they still enjoyed the gift, the supremely
important gift of the old clairvoyance which enabled them to see into
the spiritual world and to incorporate the primeval spiritual
experiences which were still vital in their souls into that which was
to be established upon the physical plane.

There
was one people who, at its later stage, no longer possessed this
gift, who had not undergone such preliminary evolution and who had
incarnated suddenly on the physical plane before the birth of the
human ‘I’ and was only able therefore to attend to
whatsoever furthered the development of this ‘I’ on the
physical plane, to whatsoever was necessary for its well-being there
under the guidance of its Folk Soul, its Archangel. This was the
Roman people. Everything that the Roman people had to accomplish for
the collective mission of Europe under the guidance of its Folk
Spirit was directed to winning recognition for the ‘I’ of
man. Hence the Roman people was able to develop human and social
relationships. They were the founders of civil law and jurisprudence
which are built up purely on the ‘I’. The relation of
human ‘I’ to human ‘I’ was the great question
in the mission of the Roman people. The Western peoples whose
civilizations grew out of the Roman civilization already possessed
more of that which, coming from the Sentient Soul, Intellectual or
Mind-Soul and from the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul itself,
fructifies the ‘I’ in some way and projects it outward
into the world. Therefore all the mingling of races which external
history records and which is found in the Italian and Iberian
peninsulas, in France and Great Britain today, was necessary in order
to develop the ‘I’ on the physical plane in accordance
with the different nuances of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual
Soul and the Spiritual Soul. Such was the great mission of those
peoples who gradually developed in the most diverse ways in Western
Europe.

All
the individual shades of culture, all the particular missions of the
peoples of Western Europe can finally be explained by the fact that
in the area of the Italian and Iberian peninsulas was to be developed
that which could be formed in the ‘I’ through the
impulses of the Sentient Soul. If you study the individual folk
characters in their positive and negative aspects you will find that
the peoples of the Italian and Iberian peninsulas reflect a peculiar
fusion of the ‘I’ with the Sentient Soul. You will be
able to understand, however, the peculiar characteristics of those
peoples who, until recent times, lived on the soil of France, if you
study the growth and fusion of the Intellectual Soul with the ‘I’.
The great worldwide achievements of a country such as Great Britain
can be attributed to the fact that the impulse of the Spiritual Soul
has penetrated into the human ‘I’. With the world mission
of the British Empire is also associated parliamentary forms of
government and the founding of constitutional rights. The union of
the Spiritual Soul with the human ego had not yet been realized
inwardly. If you recognize how this union between the Spiritual Soul
and the ‘I’ that was oriented outwards originated, you
will find that the great historical conquests of the inhabitants of
that island proceed from this impulse. You will also find that the
establishment of parliamentary forms of government at once becomes
comprehensible if one realizes that, in consequence of this, an
impulse of the Spiritual Soul was to find expression on the plane of
world-history.

Thus
cultural diversities were a necessity, for the individual peoples had
to be guided through the many stages of ego development. If we had
sufficient time to enlarge upon these matters we could find examples
from history which show the ramifications of these basic forces and
how they manifest in the most diverse ways. Thus the peculiar
constitution of soul influenced the Western peoples who had not
preserved the direct, original memory of the old clairvoyant insight
into the spiritual world of former times. In the Germanic and
Northern regions in later times, that which proceeded directly from a
gradual, continuous evolution of the original clairvoyance with which
the Sentient Soul had already been imbued, had to develop in a wholly
different way. This accounts for that characteristic trait of
inwardness which is only the after-effect of a clairvoyant insight
experienced in a former age. The task of the Southern Germanic
peoples lay primarily in the domain of the Spiritual Soul. The
Graeco-Latin age had to develop the Intellectual Soul (or Mind-Soul).
But not only this; it had also to include a wonderful development
still working in from prehistoric times and imbued with clairvoyant
insight. All this was then poured into the Spiritual Soul of the
Central European and Scandinavian peoples and its after-effects lived
on as an inner disposition of soul. It was the task of the Southern
Germanic peoples to develop first of all what pertains to the inward
preparation of the Spiritual Soul, imbuing it with spiritual
substance of the old clairvoyance, transposed now on to the physical
plane.

The
philosophies of Central Europe represented by Fichte, Schelling and
Hegel in the nineteenth century seem far removed from the sphere of
mythology. Nevertheless they are simply the products of the highest
sublimation of the old clairvoyant insight, of the cooperation of the
divine-spiritual Beings within the heart of man. Otherwise it would
not have been possible for a Hegel to have looked upon his ideas as
realities; it would have been impossible for him to make the strange
remark, so characteristic of the man, when, in answer to the
question, “What is the abstract?” he replied: “The
abstract is for instance an individual who fulfils his daily duties —
the carpenter, for example.” What is concrete to the purely
abstract theorist was therefore abstract to Hegel. What to the purely
abstract theorist are mere thoughts, were to him great, mighty
architects of the world. Hegel's philosophy is the final, the
most highly sublimated expression of the Spiritual Soul and embodies
in the form of pure concepts that which Nordic man still saw as
sensible-super-sensible, divine spiritual powers associated with the
‘I’. The ‘I’ of Fichte's philosophy was
simply the precipitation of what the God Thor had given to the human
soul, only viewed from the standpoint of the Spiritual Soul and
clothed seemingly in the barest of thoughts, the thought of “I
am”, which is the starting-point of Fichte's philosophy.
From the gift of the ‘I’ by the God Thor or Donar to the
ancient Nordic peoples from the spiritual world, down to this
philosophy, evolution follows a straight line. Thor had to prepare
this development for the Spiritual Soul in order that this Soul might
have the content appropriate for its task which is to turn towards
the external world and to work within that world. But this philosophy
is aware not only of the external world of crude empiric experience,
but finds in the external world the content of the Spiritual Soul
itself and regards nature simply as the idea in its other aspect. The
mission of the Nordic Germanic peoples in Central Europe is to ensure
that this impulse lives on.

Now
since all evolution is a continuous process we must ask ourselves
what form it takes. When we look back into ancient times we observe a
remarkable phenomenon. We have already said that the first
manifestations of ancient Indian culture were expressed through the
etheric body after the spiritual forces of soul had been adequately
developed. There are however other civilizations which have also
preserved the old Atlantean culture and carried it over into the
post-Atlantean epoch. Whilst, on the one hand, the ancient Indian was
able to return to the etheric body with highly developed faculties of
soul and out of the forces of this body created his great
civilization and lofty spiritual life, we have, on the other hand, a
culture which originated in Atlantis and continued to work on in the
post-Atlantean epoch, a culture which owes its origin and development
to its emphasis upon the other aspect of the consciousness of the
etheric body. This is the Chinese culture. If you bear this
connection in mind and remember that the Atlantean culture was
directly related to what in our earlier lectures we called the “Great
Spirit”; you will understand the peculiarities of Chinese
culture. This culture was directly connected with the highest stages
of world-evolution. But it still works into the bodies of men today
and from an entirely different angle. It seems very likely,
therefore, that these two civilizations, the two great polarities of
the post-Atlantean epoch, will clash at some future time — the
Indian which, within certain limits, is capable of development, and
the Chinese that isolates itself and remains static, repeating what
existed in the old Atlantean epoch. One literally receives an occult,
scientific, poetic impression if one follows the evolution of the
Chinese Empire, if one thinks of the Great Wall of China which sought
to exclude completely everything which originated in primeval times
and had been developed in the post-Atlantean epoch. Something like an
occult, poetic feeling steals over one if one compares the Wall of
China with what had once existed in former times. I can give only the
barest indications about these matters. If you compare them with the
existing findings of science you will find how extraordinary
illuminating they are. Let us consider clairvoyantly the old
continent of Atlantis which will be found where the Atlantic Ocean
now lies, between Africa and Europe on the one side and America on
the other. This continent was encircled by a warm stream which,
strange as it may seem, was seen clairvoyantly to flow from the South
through Baffin Bay towards the North of Greenland, encircling it.
Then, turning eastward, it gradually cooled down. Long before the
continents of Russia and Siberia had emerged, it flowed past the Ural
mountains, changed course, skirted the Eastern Carpathians, debauched
into the region now occupied by the Sahara and finally reached the
Atlantic Ocean in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Biscay. Thus it
followed a strictly delimited course. Only the last remaining traces
of this stream are still extant. This stream is the Gulf Stream which
at that time encircled the Atlantean continent. Now you will recall
that in their psychic life the Greeks experienced a memory of the
spiritual worlds. The picture of Oceanus which is a memory of that
Atlantean epoch arose within them. Their picture of the world, their
cosmogony, was very near the truth because it was derived from the
old Atlantean epoch. The stream that flowed southward via Spitzbergen
as a warm current and gradually cooled, etc. followed a strictly
delimited course. This circumscribed course was unmistakably echoed
in the Chinese culture, a culture circumscribed by the Great Wall and
which had been brought over from Atlantis. The Atlantean civilization
had as yet no history; hence the Chinese civilization also has
preserved an element of the unhistorical. It preserves something of
the pre Indian culture, something surviving from old Atlantis.

Let
us now describe the further progress of the Germanic and Nordic Folk
Spirit. What consequences will ensue when a Folk Spirit so directs
his people that the Spirit Self in particular can develop? Let us
remember that the etheric body was developed in the ancient Indian
epoch, the sentient body in the Persian, the Sentient Soul in the
Egypto-Chaldean, the Intellectual Soul (or Mind-Soul) in the
Graeco-Latin, the Spiritual Soul (or Consciousness-Soul) in our
present epoch which is not yet concluded. The next epoch will see the
invasion of the Spiritual Soul by the Spirit Self, so that the Spirit
Self shall irradiate the Spiritual Soul. This is the task of the
sixth post-Atlantean civilization and must be prepared for gradually.
This civilization which must be preeminently a receptive one, for it
must reverently await the influx of the Spirit Self into the
Spiritual Soul, is being prepared by the peoples of Western Asia and
their outposts in Eastern Europe, the Slavonic peoples. The latter
with their Folk Souls were the outposts of the coming sixth
post-Atlantean epoch for the very good reason that future
contingencies must to a certain extent be prepared beforehand, must
already be anticipated in order to prepare the ground for future
development. It is extremely interesting to study these outposts of a
Folk Soul who is preparing himself for future epochs. This accounts
for the peculiar character of the Slavonic peoples who are our
immediate Eastern neighbours. In the eyes of the Western European
their whole culture gives the impression of being in a preparatory
stage and in a curious way, through the medium of their outposts,
they present that which in spirit is wholly different from any other
mythology. We should give a false impression of these Eastern
outposts as a future’ civilization if we were to compare them
with the culture of the Western European peoples who enjoy a
continuous, unbroken tradition which is still rooted in, and has its
source in the old clairvoyance. The peculiarity attaching to the
souls of these Eastern European peoples is reflected in the whole
attitude they have always shown when the question of their relations
to the higher worlds arose. In comparison with our ‘mythology’
in Western Europe with its individual deities, their (i.e. the
Slavonic peoples) relation to the higher worlds is totally different.
What this Slavonic ‘mythology’ presents to us as the
direct outpouring of the inner being of the people may be compared to
the anthroposophical conception of successive planes or worlds
through which we prepare ourselves to understand a higher spiritual
culture. We find in the East, for example, the following conception:
the West has been moulded by the influence of successive and related
cultures. In the East we find, in the first place, a distinct
consciousness of a world of the Cosmic Father. Everything that is
creatively active in air and fire, in all the elements in and above
the Earth, is embodied in the concept of the Heavenly Father, in one
seemingly great, all-embracing idea which is at the same time an
all-embracing feeling. Just as we think of the Devachanic world as
fructifying our Earth, so this Divine world, the world of the Father,
draws nigh from the East, fructifying that which is experienced as
the Mother, the Spirit of the Earth. We have no other expression and
can think of no other way of picturing the whole Spirit of the Earth
than in the fertilization of Mother Earth. Instead of individual
deities we have then two contrasting worlds. And confronting these
two worlds as a third world is that which we feel to be the Blessed
Child of these two worlds. This Blessed Child is not an individual
being, not an emotional feeling, but something that is the creation
of the Heavenly Father and the Earth Mother. The relation of Devachan
to the Earth is perceived in this way from the spiritual world. The
birth of new life, the coming of springtime, and that which grows and
multiplies in the material body is felt as something wholly
spiritual; and that which grows and multiplies in the soul is
perceived as the world which at the same time is felt to be the
Blessed Child of the Heavenly Father and the Earth Mother. Universal
as these conceptions are, we find them among the outposts of the
Slavonic peoples who have advanced westwards. In no Western European
mythology is this conception so universal. In the West we find
clearly defined deities; but they are not the same as those which we
depict in our spiritual cosmogony; these are more nearly represented
by the Heavenly Father, the Earth Mother and the Blessed Child of the
East. In the conception of the Blessed Child there is again a world
which permeates another world. It is a world that is envisaged as a
separate world because it is associated with the physical sun and its
light. The Slavonic element also recognizes this Being — though
different, of course, in conception and feeling — which we have
so often met with in Persian mythology; it recognizes the Sun Being
who sheds his blessings upon the other three worlds, so that the
destiny of man is woven into creation, into the Earth, through the
fertilization of the Earth Mother by the Heavenly Father and through
that which the Sun Spirit weaves into both these worlds. A fifth
world is that which embraces everything spiritual. The Eastern
European feels the spiritual world underlying all the forces of
nature and all animate beings. We must think of this as a wholly
different sentient response, as associated more perhaps with the
phenomena, creations and beings of nature.

We
must think of this Slavonic soul as being able to see entities in
natural phenomena, to see not only the physical and sensory aspects,
but also the astral and spiritual. Hence the Slavonic soul conceived
of a vast number of Beings in this strange spiritual world which we
can at best compare with the world of the Elves of Light. The
spiritual world which is looked upon in Spiritual Science as the
fifth world is approximately the world which dawns in the hearts and
minds of the peoples of Eastern Europe. Whatever name we attach to it
is of no importance; what is of importance are the subtle shades and
gradations of feelings of the Slavonic peoples and that the concepts
which characterize this fifth plane or spiritual world are to be
found in Eastern Europe. In this frame of mind this world of Eastern
Europe was preparing for that Spirit which is to pour the Spirit Self
into man in anticipation of the epoch when the Spiritual Soul shall
be uplifted to receive the Spirit Self in the sixth post Atlantean
age which is to succeed our own. We meet with this in a unique manner
not only in the creations of the Folk Souls who are as I have just
described them, but we find it remarkably anticipated in the diverse
manifestations of Eastern Europe and its culture.

It
is most interesting to observe bow the Eastern European expresses his
natural receptivity to pure Spirit by assimilating Western European
culture with great devotion, thus looking forward prophetically to
the time when he will be able to unite something even greater with
his being. Hence also his limited interest in isolated aspects of
this Western European culture. He absorbs what is offered him more in
broad outlines, ignoring the details, because he is preparing himself
to assimilate that which is to enter mankind as the Spirit Self. It
is particularly interesting to see how, under this influence, it has
been possible for Eastern Europe to develop a much more advanced
conception of the Christ than Western Europe, except in those areas
of the West where the conception of the Christ has been introduced by
Spiritual Science. Amongst those who do not accept the teachings of
Spiritual Science the most advanced conception of Christ is that of
the Russian philosopher, Solovieff. His conception of Christ is such
that it can only be understood by students of Spiritual Science
because he lifts it to ever higher planes and reveals its infinite
potentialities, showing that our understanding of Christ today is
only a beginning, because the Christ Impulse has only been able to
reveal to mankind a fraction of what it holds in store. But if we
look at the conception of Christ as presented by Hegel, for example,
we find that Hegel understood Him as only the most refined, the most
sublimated Spiritual Soul could understand Him. But Solovieff's
conception of Christ is very different. He fully recognizes the dual
nature of this conception. He rejects the endless theological
polemics which in reality rest upon deep misunderstandings, because
ordinary conceptions are inadequate for an understanding of the dual
nature of Christ, and because they fail to develop in us any
realization that the two aspects, the Human and the Divine, must be
clearly distinguished. The concept of Christ rests upon a clear
realization of what took place when the Christ Spirit entered into
the man Jesus of Nazareth who had already developed all the necessary
attributes. We must first of all understand the two natures of Christ
and the union of both at a higher stage. As long as we have not
grasped this duality, we have not understood the Christ in all His
fullness. Only that philosophical understanding can achieve this
which foresees that man himself will participate in a culture in
which his Spiritual Soul will be able to receive the Spirit Self, so
that in the sixth epoch of civilization man will feel himself to be a
duality in whom the higher nature will curb the lower.

Solovieff
carries this duality into his conception of Christ and emphasizes
that this conception can be meaningful only if one accepts the
existence of a divine and human nature which can only be understood
if one recognizes that their cooperation is a reality, that they form
not an abstract, but an organic unity. Solovieff already recognizes
that we must think of this Being as possessing two centres of will.
If you accept the teachings of Spiritual Science concerning the true
significance of the Christ Being in their original form which
stemmed, not from an imaginary, but from a spiritually real Indian
influence, you will then have to think of Christ as having developed
in His three bodies the capacities of feeling, thinking and willing.
It is a human feeling, thinking and willing into which the Divine
feeling, thinking and willing descends. The European man will only
assimilate this completely when he has risen to the sixth stage of
civilization. This had been prophetically expressed in Solovieff's
anticipatory conception of Christ which announces the dawn of a later
civilization. This philosophy of Eastern Europe therefore reaches far
beyond that of Hegel and Kant, and in the presence of this philosophy
one suddenly senses the first stirrings of a later development. It is
far in advance because this conception of Christ is felt to be a
prophetic anticipation, the dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean
civilization. Consequently the whole Christ Being, the whole
significance of Christ occupies a central place in philosophy and
thus becomes totally different from the Western European conceptions
of it. The conception of Christ, in so far as it has been developed
outside Spiritual Science and is conceived as a living substance, as
a living spiritual entity which shall permeate all social life and
social institutions — which is felt as a Personality in whose
service man finds himself as ‘man endowed with Spirit Self’
— this Christ-Personality is portrayed in a wonderfully
concrete manner in Solovieff's various expositions of St.
John's Gospel and its opening words. Only if we stand upon the
ground of Spiritual Science can we comprehend Solovieff's
profound interpretation of the sentence, “In the Beginning was
the Word or Logos”, and how differently St. John's Gospel
is understood by a philosophy which in a remarkable way anticipates
the future.

If,
on the one hand, Hegel's philosophy marks a high point,
something that is born out of the Spiritual Soul as the highest
philosophical achievement, this philosophy of Solovieff, on the other
hand, provides the seed in the Spiritual Soul for the philosophy of
the Spirit Self which will be incorporated in the sixth cultural
epoch. There is perhaps no greater contrast than that eminently
Christian conception of the State which hovers as a great ideal
before Solovieff as a dream of the future, that Christian conception
of the social State which takes everything implicit in that
conception in order to present it as an offering to the in-streaming
Spirit Self, in order to hold it up as an ideal of the future to be
Christianized by the powers of the future — there is indeed no
greater contrast than this idea of Solovieff's of a Christian
community in which the Christ conception lies wholly in the future
and the Divine State of St. Augustine who accepts, it is true, the
Christ idea, but whose Divine State is simply the Roman State with
Christ incorporated in the Roman idea of the State. What provides the
knowledge for the emergent Christianity of the future is the decisive
question. In Solovieff's State Christ is the blood which
circulates in the body social, and the essential point is that the
State is envisaged as a concrete personality so that it will act as a
living spiritual entity, but at the same time will fulfil its mission
with all the idiosyncrasies of a personality. No other philosophy is
so deeply permeated by the Christ idea — the Christ idea which
is anticipated in Spiritual Science at a higher level — and yet
at the same time has remained so long in the germinal stage.
Everything that we find in the East, from the make-up of the people
to its philosophy, appears to us as something which contains only the
germinal beginning of a future evolution and which, therefore, had
also to submit to the special education of the Time Spirit of ancient
Greece, the guiding Spirit of exoteric Christianity who was entrusted
with the mission of becoming later on the Time Spirit for Europe. The
make-up of this people whose task will be to develop the seed of the
sixth culture-epoch had from the very beginning to be not only
educated, but nursed and nurtured by that Time Spirit. And so we can
literally say — and here Father concept and Mother concept lose
their dual aspect — that the make-up of the Russian people
which is destined to evolve gradually into the Folk Soul, was not
only educated, but was nursed and nurtured by that which as we have
seen, had been developed out of the old Greek Time Spirit and had
then assumed externally another rank.

Thus
the various missions are distributed between Western, Central,
Northern and Eastern Europe. I wished to give you an indication of
these various missions. On the basis of these indications I propose
to add further observations and show what the Europe of the future
will be like, a future that will ensure that we must form our ideals
on the basis of such knowledge. I propose to show how, through this
influence, the Germanic and Nordic Folk Spirit is gradually
transformed into a Time Spirit.